1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments of the present invention relate to a deflection control apparatus configured to deflect a vehicle, and particularly relate to a deflection control apparatus configured to deflect a vehicle by using a braking force difference between left and right wheels.
2. Description of the Related Art
For this type of apparatus, for example, there has been proposed an apparatus configured to generate a yaw moment in a direction of avoiding lane departure by using a braking force difference between left and right wheels when there is a possibility that a subject vehicle or a host vehicle departs or deviates from a driving lane (refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid Open No. 2006-282168 (Patent Literature 1)).
According to a technology/technique described in the Patent Literature 1, the subject vehicle can be moved to a central side of the driving lane. The technology/technique described in the Patent Literature 1, however, it is not considered to make the subject vehicle drive along a desired track.
It is ideally desirable to set a target trajectory for defining the behavior of the subject vehicle (e.g. a lateral position trajectory, a yaw rate trajectory, a lateral velocity trajectory, etc.) before starting a control of avoiding the departure of the subject vehicle from the driving lane, and to perform a state feedback control, which uses an equation of motion of the vehicle, in order to achieve the target trajectory (so that the subject vehicle ends up driving along a certain track). However, generation of the braking force difference between left and right wheel causes deceleration of the vehicle, and it is thus desirable that a control time is as short as possible. It is therefore hard to apply the state feedback control when there is the braking force difference between left and right wheel.